Yesterday, the Labor Department reported the unemployment rate fell from 8.1% to 7.8% in September. Instead of being pleased, Fox News’ Your World hosted former GE CEO Jack Welch who had suggested the numbers were fraudulent, cooked up to help President Obama’s re-election – despite a lack of evidence to back it up, other than Welch’s belief that the numbers “don’t smell right.” Guest host Eric Bolling didn’t just give Welch a sympathetic platform from which to promote his conspiracy theory but helped to legitimize it.

Bolling asked snidely, “Is this the October surprise?” hinting it may have been planned in advance. He also displayed Welch’s tweet saying, “Unbeliveable jobs numbers. These Chicago guys will do anything...can’t debate so change the numbers.”

Welch said about his tweet, “Look Eric, I have no idea where this number came from… We added 600,000 jobs in the government sector in August and September. And that’s the largest number we’ve had since the study’s been done over a two month period. In September, the household employment, which we normally don’t use, added 780,000 jobs. That’s the highest since 1983. I’ve been reviewing businesses all week… No one’s stronger than they were in the third quarter than they were in the second quarter… I don’t know what the right number is but I’ll tell you, these numbers don’t smell right when you think about where the economy is right now.”

”So what do you think happened?” Bolling asked sympathetically.

Welch said, “I honestly don’t know. Maybe we got the wrong measurement. Maybe we should have been talking about 8.3 and 8.5 and 8.6.”

In further validation of Welch’s “smell,” Bolling read a poll of the 25 most prominent economists in the Wall Street Journal. Prior to the release of the report, “They came out with an average of about… 8.1%,” Bolling said.

Welch replied, “…And that’s exactly why I tweeted. I tweeted last night, predicting that they would come in at 7.9 so they could be below 8… This whole number is made up of a whole mess of assumptions.”

To further help validate Welch – but without providing any real evidence, Bolling asked, “There are at least two, Harley Frazis and Stephen Phillips that work at the Bureau of Labor Statistics currently, who both have been donors to the Obama campaign. Should I make any assumptions from that?”

That was too much, even for Welch. “I can’t make any judgment on that.”

Bolling asked, “How many people did you have under your employ at the peak?” When Welch answered, “410,000,” Bolling said approvingly, “You ran a major international corporation. You know what you’re talking about.”

As Media Matters noted, eight veteran economists dismissed the conspiracy theory. But Bolling was so busy sucking up to Welch that he must have forgotten all about them.

The only difference being, unlike past election “October surprises,” this one helped the INCUMBENT.

Besides, it’s not like you and your fellow Foxites haven’t tried to paint damn near everything else as an “October surprise” — whether it was an Obama video from 2007 or the attacks on the American Embassy . . .

Funny how Welch ran to Fox for a sympathetic ear to push his conspiracy theories, ‘cause it sure didn’t work when he went on both MSNBC and CNN {aka, the “librul, lamestream media”} — in fact, Tweety on “Hardball” even got you to ADMIT you had no evidence for your theories . . .

In 1999, GWBush political advisor Karl Rove contacted Welch and told him a Bush administration would initiate comprehensive deregulation of the broadcast industry and guaranteed that deregulation would be implemented in a way that would create phenomenal profits for conglomerates with significant media holdings, like GE.

Welch told several people at GE that the conversation with Rove convinced him a Bush presidency would result in billions of dollars of additional profits for General Electric. The journalists who had their paychecks signed by Welch knew favorable coverage of George W. Bush would be considered an outstanding contribution to the financial well being of GE.

The Republicans established surreptitious links with NBC news including âMeet The Pressâ and were soon boasting that Tim Russert would take their attacks on Al Gore and repeat them verbatim on air. Welch personally renegotiated Russertâs salary.

Welch spent election night 2000 at NBCâs decision desk with access to raw data not available to news anchors, writers, producers or other reporters. After a phone conversation with John Ellis, George W. Bushâs cousin and Fox Newsâ senior decision desk official who called both the Florida and the national election for Bush, Welch demanded to know why NBC was not also calling the election for Bush. Shortly after, NBC changed its call from Gore to Bush, was followed by all major TV news outlets.

“The number of unemployed persons, at 12.1 million, decreased by 456,000 in September. "

“In September, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs
decreased by 468,000 to 6.5 million.”

“The number of persons unemployed for less than 5 weeks declined by 302,000 over the month to 2.5 million.”

“Total employment rose by 873,000 in September, following 3 months of little change. The employment-population ratio increased by 0.4 percentage point to 58.7 percent, after edging down in the prior 2 months.”

“The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) rose from 8.0 million in August to 8.6 million in September.”

“Among the marginally attached, there were 802,000 discouraged workers in September, a decline of 235,000 from a year earlier.”

The numbers are better- there’s no area where they’re not for the month, even if they’re still fairly flat for the year. Fox News is playing the whole “one area determines it all” card, but you can tell they won’t acknowledge the big picture.

Been listening to Fox off and on for most of the day and have heard at least two guests flat out deny – in most unmistakable words – that it would be possible to cook the numbers.
Have alwo seen both Juan Williams and Joe Trippi, who normally belong to the tame poodle category of comentators, try as hard as they possibly could to respond to a question only to be disgracefully shouted down by the other foxies. Could this be the equivalence of twitchy catfish in the bathtub?

It’s been a while, now, that I’ve felt that Fox News may have started coming apart at the seams.

This is just the latest bit of sour grapes from the GOP. They wanted an unemployment rate higher than 8 percent, and a job number of say 60,000 for the month so they could spend the day attacking Obama with it. Fox had already set the stage for this on the debate night when they did their first victory laps, saying that “Obama had a bad night tonight, and hoo boy, when those jobs numbers come out on Friday, this could really hurt the President’s reelection chances…”

When the numbers came in better for everyone, it was like a bucket of cold water on the victory dances. Because the numbers bear out a central tenet of the President’s campaign and nullify one of the central points of the GOP attacks.

Had this come out during a GOP Presidency, Fox News would be scrambling to promote these numbers. They would be talking about how this is a good sign for everyone and a reflection of the work the GOP has been doing, etc etc. Because it’s happening under a Dem Presidency, no less one that they’ve worked to undermine, they can’t accept the facts. And they’re further upset that this is undermining the “spike the football” discussions they were planning on having all weekend.